


five times your soulmate slips through your fingers (and one time you catch him, safe and sound)

by InsideMyBrain



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crying, Denial, Denial of Feelings, Don't Starve Together, Drinking, Falling In Love, Fleetwood Mac References, Flirting, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Gaming, Ice Skating, Idiots in Love, Jealousy, Kissing, M/M, Minecraft, Mutual Pining, Not Beta Read, Pining, Revenge (Song), SMPLive - Freeform, Twitch - Freeform, because im gay, creeper aw man, this is pure me vomiting on my keyboard to the tune of mutual pining then posting it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:47:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21884335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsideMyBrain/pseuds/InsideMyBrain
Summary: Do you ever just think, like, if you hear one of these sentences out of context when you wake up, and you'd just be like, how is that gonna come up today?Every morning, each person wakes up to a random sentence of their soulmate's inked into their forearm.
Relationships: Daniel | RTGameCrowd/Kevin O'Reilly
Comments: 84
Kudos: 218





	1. you being here is just making me go crazy / yeah, i have that effect on people

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be a short oneshot based on an offhand remark from the first don't starve stream they did... ah well, more content in this tag is always better.
> 
> Obligatory RPF Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction and is in no way intended to reflect anything in RT & Kevin's actual lives. Don't send this to them or anyone affiliated with them! 
> 
> enjoy as always :)

Every morning, Kevin wakes up to a random sentence of his soulmate’s inked into his forearm. Sometimes they’re ordinary — _you want a piece of cake?_ or _hey, wait up_ or _sorry, I just need to get by_ — and sometimes they’re weird — _good news, I shit myself because I ate Alfredo sauce_ comes to mind — but he’s never heard one said to him, and it’s beginning to frustrate him. In the whole world, the only way to find his soulmate is to hear a sentence that matches the one on his arm, and he never has. Most of his friends have found their soulmates, and he’s not getting any younger.

He sighs, rolling out of bed and bracing himself for the daily check. Today, the sentence is fairly short: _you being here is just making me go crazy, y’know?_ He squints at it in the early morning dimness of his bedroom. It sounds flirty, or maybe it’s an insult. The line between those is blurry at best, anyway.

He sighs and turns on the light, getting ready for the day. He has to get a recording in before streaming with RT later in the afternoon. The thought cheers him up, and he smiles at himself in the mirror as he washes his face. Daniel’s a good friend, and doing stuff like this helps relieve some of the isolation and loneliness that comes with being self-employed.

Maybe that’s why he hasn’t found his soulmate. He never leaves the house.

Kevin dismisses that thought quickly and heads for the kitchen. What he really needs is a coffee to wake him up, some breakfast, and a bad PS1 game to take his mind off all this soulmate stuff.

* * *

By the time they start streaming, Kevin’s successfully gotten his mind off of today’s sentence. They’ve been sponsored to play a game called Don’t Starve Together, which Daniel is good at and Kevin is decidedly not, so it should be fun. They start the stream with only minor technical difficulties, and begin playing.

Kevin likes doing this kind of thing, messing around and having someone to banter with and bounce jokes off of. He and Dan have good chemistry, too — Daniel makes him feel at ease, laughing at his jokes and adding on. He’s just getting into the game when Daniel makes an offhand remark that catches his interest.

“So, the best way to get your sanity back, actually, is to pick flowers at this point in this game,” Daniel informs him. Kevin’s currently running from a shadow monster, and he hums, thinking.

“Does that work IRL, too?” he jokes.

“Ah, I’m pretty sure it do-” Dan stops when he sees that Kevin’s just been killed. There’s a pause.

“Well, I’d best be going,” Kevin says calmly, then floats away. They both crack up. “Can you see my ghost, just floating away?”

“Yeah, I can,” Daniel laughs. “Oh no, this is a really bad start. The ghosts are still there, trying to chase you and kill you as well.”

“I’m a more powerful ghost,” Kevin says. He stops beside some seeds, and the option says _haunt_. He giggles. “I can haunt these seeds, whoo! What a game.”

“So unfortunately,” Dan is saying, while Kevin is entertained by the seeds, “because you’re now a ghost, you’re making _me_ go insane faster.”

Kevin’s stomach swoops and his heart pounds, and he hastily checks his arm. Nope, not the same sentence. He should have known it was too good to be true. He forces a laugh and jokes, “C’mere! I’m lonely!”

Daniel laughs hard at that. So does Kevin, choosing to ignore the truth of that statement.

They continue bantering for a few more minutes, wandering the map in search of a way to resurrect Kevin. Every time Daniel mentions losing his sanity, Kevin glances down at his arm, but each time the sentence is slightly off. He sighs, figuring he might as well stop checking.

“What’re we looking for?” He asks. He needs to ground himself, get back into the game and forget the sentence.

“We’re looking for spiders,” Daniel reminds him.

“Oh, yeah.” Kevin laughs.

“Okay, we need to go to, like, a deep wood biome,” Daniel says. Kevin nods; deep wood biome, that’s fine, he can concentrate on the game. “So, I need to follow the road further down,” Daniel continues. “And I need to start grabbing flowers too, cause… You being here is just making me go crazy, y’know?”

“Yeah, I have that effect on people,” Kevin replies automatically. Daniel laughs again, then what he just said finally registers in Kevin’s brain.

“Just literally being in proximity right now,” Daniel giggles while Kevin feverishly checks his arm. The sentence stares back up at him, the black lines of the letters stark on his pale skin: _You being here is just making me go crazy, y’know?_

Daniel is his soulmate?

“Should I, uh, split up and look for clues?” He asks, still staring at the sentence. Weeks and months and years of hoping for a moment like this and now that it’s finally come, he has no idea what to do. He doesn’t want to tell Daniel they’re soulmates in the middle of the livestream — this is kind of a moment he wants to keep between them. But he also doesn’t want to just text him the information. Daniel's reaction to receiving a text like that in the middle of the stream is bound to disrupt it, and he definitely doesn’t want that. He doesn’t even know if he should let him know after the stream, because Daniel might not remember his exact words, and exact words are important. In fact, is Kevin so sure that, a moment ago, Daniel said _exactly_ what’s written on his arm?

Kevin realizes that Daniel’s waiting for a response to whatever he said while Kevin was zoned out staring at his arm, so he says, “Okay. I probably won’t be able to find you if we split up, so I’ll just stay.” 

Daniel keeps talking, but Kevin’s not paying attention. He has the sinking feeling that his fleeting chance to tell Daniel has slipped away, and now he’s royally fucked this up. Still, he makes an effort to engage with the game — can’t let down the viewers, no matter how much of a personal crisis he’s going through at the moment — and in another twenty minutes, he’s having fun again.

“We need to get, like, some fake YouTube beef going between us,” Daniel suggests at one point, and Kevin laughs.

“I think we should! We can make diss tracks and everything. It’d be brilliant.” Kevin can already imagine all the trash talking he can do on Twitter.

“Like a publicity move for both our channels,” says Daniel, and Kevin’s sold. They start shouting compliments at each other a moment later, and Kevin knows it’s just a bit, but it stabs into his heart and twists in a peculiar way, so he suggests they stop.

This whole stream is just making him feel weird. 

He manages to get through it, though, and before he knows it, he’s signing off as Daniel ends the stream.

“That was a lot of fun, dude,” Kevin says, stretching in his chair. His back cracks.

“Yeah, it was,” Daniel agrees. “We should do this more often.”

“Totally,” says Kevin. “How’s that gonna work with our beef, though?”

Daniel laughs. “Oh, we’re actually doing this. Alright. What should it be over?”

“Hmm.” Kevin thinks for a moment. “Whoever hits 2 million first? That’s my next subscriber milestone.”

“Not for long,” Daniel says, and Kevin can hear the smirk in his voice. “I’ll hit 2 mil first, and become the king of Irish YouTube.”

Kevin smiles. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”

“You’re on.”

They exchange a couple details about their sponsor, and after that, Daniel says goodbye. Kevin ends their discord call with a smile on his face — then he freezes.

He forgot to tell Daniel about the sentence.

“_Feck!_” He flings his controller across the room, then immediately feels guilty when it smashes into his cupboard. He walks over to retrieve it, mentally kicking himself.

He briefly considers calling Daniel back to explain the situation, but realizes how stupid he’ll sound. _Hi Dan, sorry to bother but I think we’re soulmates? During the stream you said my sentence and I didn’t say anything because I’m stupid and didn’t register it at first, but love me please?_ No fecking way. He just has to wait for Daniel to say the right sentence another day. Kevin realizes with a sinking feeling in his stomach that it could be months, or even years, for everything to line up perfectly like it just did and give him another chance.

_This is going to be torture_, he thinks.


	2. 'cause baby tonight, the creeper's tryin' to steal all our stuff again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this meme dead yet? yes? oh

Every morning, Daniel wakes up to a random sentence of his soulmate’s inked into his forearm. It’s kind of fun, checking his arm every morning and guessing what his soulmate is up to that day. Like a game, almost. Today, he chuckles as he raises his forearm into view. _‘Cause baby tonight, the creeper’s tryin’ to steal all our stuff again _is printed clearly on his arm. At least his soulmate has good taste.

He gets out of bed, yawning. He’s at a con today, and he has a big day ahead of him, including a panel with Kevin and a meet and greet. He gets dressed quickly and heads down to the hotel lobby to meet up with his friends, humming _Revenge_ the whole way.

* * *

The convention goes well, Daniel thinks. It’s always incredible meeting fans, and he didn’t stutter too much or trip over his own feet onstage, so he feels good about the panel. He can tell Kevin, too, feels good about it by the spring in his step as they make their way to a nearby bar. Or maybe it’s just because of the promise of alcohol.

“You’re in a good mood,” he comments to Kevin, falling into step beside him, a little ways ahead of the rest of their friend group.

“And why not?” Kevin grins at him in the dusk, his eyes flashing with mirth. “Today was amazing, dude. I always forget how cool it is meeting all the fans until it’s happening,”

“Yeah, it’s class,” Daniel agrees, smiling back. “I got pretty nervous before the Q&A panel, butit all turned out fine, so I shouldn’t have worried.”

“Oh really?” Kevin asks. “I couldn’t tell.”

“I’m glad,” Daniel tells him. “But yeah, my stomach was churning something terrible.”

“Well, you’ve no reason to be nervous,” Kevin shrugs. “You’re funny and personable, I’d be extremely surprised if the whole audience didn’t fall in love with you.” He winks.

“Ha, ha. Thanks,” Daniel rolls his eyes fondly.

“Anytime.” Kevin shoots a glance behind them, at the rest of their friend group — which consists of mostly Daniel’s friends and a few of Kevin’s — and sighs. “They’re being so slow,” he all but whines. “Race you to the bar?” He wiggles his eyebrows.

“You’re on,” Daniel declares, and they take off down the street.

The bar’s only a few blocks away, but the time they get there, they’re both huffing and out of breath. Daniel wins by a slim margin, much to Kevin’s dismay, and they slide into barstools with silly, boyish grins on their faces. They each order a pint, and when they get them Daniel holds up his glass.

“What should we toast to?” he asks.

Kevin tilts his head, thinking. For a moment, Daniel thinks he sees Kevin’s eyes flick downward towards his forearms, covered by his country roads hoodie, but then his eyes find Daniel’s again and he thinks he must have imagined it. “To Insomnia.” He pauses, then adds: “The event, not the sleep thing.”

They laugh, clink glasses, and drink deeply. When Daniel puts his glass down again, the rest of his friends have surrounded them, and the two are once again enveloped in cheery conversation and playful arguments.

The rest of the evening passes in a blur as Daniel downs more drink. He cuts himself off after a few, not wanting to be absolutely plastered when he has to get up for a flight home tomorrow, but he’s drunk enough to feel weightless and happy.

Somewhere along the line, the bar has started playing the goofiest music possible, so right now they’re bopping along to some cheesy ‘80s song that Daniel can’t remember the name of. _Sweet Little Lies_, maybe?

_Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies… Tell me lies, tell me, tell me lies…_ the singer croons.

“Oh no no, you can’t disguise!” Kevin sings along beside him. Kevin’s drunker than he, but even so, his voice is perfectly on-pitch.

“Hey, you’re a pretty good singer!” Daniel exclaims.

“Flatterer. I bet you say that to all the boys,” Kevin jokes, taking another sip.

“I’m serious,” Daniel insists. “Besides, would it be so bad if I was just flattering you?”

Kevin coughs suddenly, slamming down his drink, and Daniel starts to pat his back. “Easy, bud,” Daniel laughs. “Might wanna slow down, there,” he says, nodding to Kevin’s glass.

“Yeah,” says Kevin. “That’s what it is.” He smiles again, his teeth flashing in the bar’s dimmed lights. “On the other hand, maybe I need a top-up.”

“Kevin-!”

Kevin turns back to the bar. _If I could turn the page, in time then I’d rearrange just a day or two…_ blasts over the speakers as he orders.

Kevin gets his top-up, then turns back to Daniel with a cheeky grin. “What were you saying?”

Daniel shakes his head. “Never mind. Y’know what, I’ll have another, too.”

“Good man,” says Kevin, taking a long sip of his own.

Daniel gets another pint, then raises his glass to Kevin’s again. “Cheers.” He drinks.

The song ends, and a new one starts up, this one more familiar. Kevin’s eyes widen in shock and he laughs loudly.

“What?” Daniel asks, amused.

“Listen,” says Kevin. “You don’t recognize this song?”

Daniel listens for a moment, then suddenly recognizes it as Usher’s _DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love_.

“You know what this means,” Kevin crows, then starts to sing a second later. “So we back in the mine, got our pickaxe swinging from side to side, side, side to side!”

Daniel throws his head back to laugh, but it dies on his lips as he remembers the sentence printed on his forearm. The first line of the chorus of CaptainSparklez’ _Revenge_ and here Kevin is, singing _Revenge_ right in front of him. Is this the moment he finds his soulmate?

If it is, Daniel is completely unprepared.

“Heads up,” Kevin continues, “you hear a sound, turn around and look up-”

“Hey, _Revenge_!” One of their other friends calls, then joins in. “Total shock fills your body!”

One by one, each of their friends joins in the song, with the occasional mistake, but surprisingly, they get most of the lyrics right for a bunch of drunk people. Daniel holds his breath as they reach the chorus.

“‘Cause baby tonight,” sings Kevin — along with several other people, both from their friend group and across the bar, somehow. “The creeper’s tryin’ to steal all our stuff again!”

Daniel sighs. Kevin reaches forward and nudges him lightly. “C’mon, I know you know the lyrics!”

Daniel gives him a small smile, then reluctantly joins in. “And run, run, until it’s done, done, until the sun comes up in the morn!”

“‘Cause baby tonight, the creeper’s tryin’ to steal all our stuff again!” They sing in unison. Daniel glances around the bar, singing along absentmindedly, trying to take stock of who sang the line — but it’s difficult when the song keeps moving forward, and his drunken brain crashes and restarts while trying to multitask. He notes that Kevin, Wilbur, Max, and Kevin’s editor Kipp as well as some girls and one guy across the bar have sung the line, but more people could have while he was distracted. He suddenly feels sick and dizzy, unsure of whether it’s from the alcohol or the soulmate thing. Daniel groans, his head connecting with the table in front of him with a muffled _thump_.

He feels a hand on his shoulder, then hears Kevin’s voice, soft and close to him. “Are you okay?”

He lifts his head and looks at Kevin, his face flushed from drink and lips bitten pink, and shakes his head. “I gotta go to sleep,” he says.

Kevin’s mouth twists. “You need me to call you a cab?”

Daniel waves him off. “Nah, I got it. Thanks, though.” He starts to get up from his seat, but Kevin’s hand on his shoulder lingers.

“Sleep well, Dan,” he says.

Daniel gives him one last tired smile. “Thanks, Kev. Night.”

He walks to the front, booking a cab on his phone as he goes. He stands by the entrance, swaying on his feet slightly, hearing his friends drunkenly sing _Revenge_ behind him. The chorus comes and goes once more as he waits for his cab, and this time the lines are so butchered it just sounds like a bunch of noise. There’s no way he’s able to tell who sung what this time.

His phone dings with an alert telling him his cab is here, so he walks out of the bar and gets in the cab waiting outside for him. He tells the driver his hotel address, and soon enough he’s lurching out of the elevator and down the hall to his hotel room door.

Daniel unlocks the door with his keycard and walks in, kicking off his shoes. He collapses on the bed and crawls under the covers, glancing at the clock on the bedside table as he does. It reads 11:58 PM.

He shucks off his jeans and hoodie quickly, wanting to watch the sentence change. When he was a kid, he’d always try to stay up way past his bedtime to watch the letters shiver and melt away, only to be replaced by new ones, shifting and falling into place to form the new day’s sentence. Now that he’s seen it happen so many times it’s kind of lost its shine, but he’s feeling nostalgic for some reason.

He stares and stares at _‘cause baby tonight, the creeper’s tryin’ to steal all our stuff again, _trying not to blink. For a moment, he allows himself to think about who it might be. He’d like for it to be someone he already knows well, so Kevin or Wilbur would be ideal — but some of those people across the bar were attractive, too. It really could be anyone in the bar, though, and he'd have no idea. He sighs.

The clock hits 12:00 AM, and the sentence fades away. A split-second later, a new one appears: _God, I’m such a dumbass._

Daniel laughs ruefully. “Me too, soulmate,” he murmurs, then pulls the covers up to his chin. He’s asleep in less than a minute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy 2020, [daniel's instagram pic](https://www.instagram.com/p/B6wbyTxHZJG/) killed me. I'm posting this from beyond the grave
> 
> I'm trying to update this as frequently as possible cause I'm going back to school soon and I'll have a lot less time to write, so hopefully I'll be back in couple days with another update. see y'all then!


	3. let me suck your dick already! / …what?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was initially going to try and keep this fic in line with the chronology of the events/streams that happened throughout 2019, but I completely messed up the timeline with this chapter and the next, so just don't think about it too hard.

It’s been months. _Months_. And Kevin still hasn’t told Daniel they’re soulmates. He’s come close a few times, but it never felt right. His finger has hovered over the send button on many a heartfelt text message, but he never had the courage to send it. His notes app is full of text drafts to Daniel, attempting to explain what happened.

_Hey Dan, I need to tell you something. A while ago when we were streaming together, you said the sentence on my arm that day. It was “you being here is just making me go crazy, y’know?”, and you said it like half an hour into the stream. I didn’t tell you at the time cause we were live and I didn’t know what to do. Because I’m stupid. So yeah, I think we’re soulmates?_

_Hey Dan, a couple weeks ago you said my sentence and I didn’t say anything cause I was scared and stupid but I think we’re soulmates and I need you to know_

_Hey Dan, I know this is weird and bad timing but that’s all my fault, I’m so stupid. I heard you say my sentence a while ago and never said anything because we were streaming at the time but I think you’re my soulmate_

_Dan we’re soulmates and I’ve known for months. I’m sorry I never said anything but I panicked. Please call me_

_Daniel, can we talk?_

It hasn’t helped that for the past few months, Kevin’s been slowly noticing more and more endearing things about Daniel. He’s always recognized his friend’s attractiveness, in an objective way, but now that he knows they’re supposed to be together it’s hard to ignore things like Daniel’s sunny smile or the way his blue eyes sparkle. Not to mention all the subtle touches when they see each other in person — he hadn’t noticed before, but Daniel is an affectionate person, and he’ll often sling an arm over Kevin’s shoulders or pat him on the back in the midst of laughter. It makes Kevin’s skin tingle, and every time he just wants to lean into Daniel’s soft touches. Every time, he restrains himself.

If Kevin’s being honest with himself, he has mixed feelings about the concept of soulmates. It makes him slightly uncomfortable that his life partner is chosen for him; makes him feel small and unimportant, like every choice he makes doesn’t matter. If he lived his life differently, he probably would never have met Daniel, and then what? He would have languished, alone and lonely, for his whole life? Feck that, Kevin thinks.

Love should be organic, real, not desperately eavesdropping on strangers, counting words and waiting for a lucky moment.

But this? This _is_ real, and it scares the shit out of him. The affection for Daniel was always there, underlying their friendship, but when Kevin got his dreaded lucky moment it dragged that affection to the forefront of his mind, forced him to confront that what he feels for one of his best friends is more than friendship. He loves Daniel, just like he was destined to, and he’s terrified of fucking this up.

Unfortunately, he thinks he might have already. Any way he thinks of telling Daniel sounds like it won’t end well, and every moment he puts it off it feels like the possibility of getting a happy ending is moving further and further away from him. No matter what he does, he’s fucked it.

He wishes he could go back in time, seize the moment Daniel spoke those words by the throat and wring it out, squeeze the universe into a ball and roll it towards the overwhelming question. Or whatever.

* * *

Today, the sentence is making Kevin incredibly uncomfortable. Aside from the general awkwardness of having the words _let me suck your dick already_ imprinted into his skin, thinking about possible contexts of the sentence is enough to turn Kevin’s stomach. He hopes it’s a joke for a stream, but there’s always a possibility it isn’t. Kevin really doesn’t want to think about Daniel saying that to some other guy, dead serious.

His hand hovers over his phone, and he frowns, debating with himself whether he should tap on RTGameCrowd on Twitch. He’s live at the moment, has been for a little while, and despite today’s sentence, Kevin does want to hear his voice. He’s just not sure if he wants to hear the words he’s saying.

He gives in with a sigh, and taps on RTGameCrowd. His stream comes up on the screen a moment later, and he sees that Daniel’s streaming with Wilbur, playing some Minecraft on SMPLive. He adjusts his earbuds and puts his phone on the table, intending to leave the stream as background noise while he works on some paperwork.

“Oh, I found a chest!” Daniel is saying. He and Wilbur are mining at the moment, and Daniel’s in a mineshaft.

“Oh, I’m so glad for you, dude!” says Wilbur.

“I found a golden apple, am I allowed take that?” Daniel giggles, and Kevin smiles. Daniel’s laughter is so cute.

“Do it, dude.”

“And some pumpkin and melon seeds,” Daniel continues, as Wilbur thanks a donator for some bits. “I don’t know if I should have this. Is that contraband, still?” Daniel starts to mine some redstone.

“It is contraband, yeah, but what are they gonna do about it, man? You’re with the dirty crime boy now.” Something about the way Wilbur says it, confident and possessive, annoys Kevin. He looks away from his screen and resolves to focus on his work. “You live on the same island as the dirty crime boy,” Wilbur continues, and Kevin clenches his teeth.

“Does that mean the police are gonna try and arrest me, or like AntVenom’s gonna kill me?” Daniel asks.

“You may get a knock on your door, but you just deny all knowledge, it’s fine,” Wilbur tells him.

They start talking about the Irish language a moment later, and Kevin relaxes a little. He can work like this, Daniel’s relaxed voice in his ear, picking up only the cadence of his words. He gets a couple things done before Will’s voice, high and mocking, interrupts his thoughts.

“Oh my God, we’re just so on the same page, oh my God,” he says, trying for a Valley Girl accent but failing. Kevin glances back at the screen to see Daniel mining some coal.

“Oh my God, we have so much in common,” Daniel says, picking up on the bit.

“We’re so in _sync_!” Will says, his accent even worse now.

“Let me suck your dick already! Sorry.”

“What?”

Laughter fills Kevin’s earbuds, but he’s not laughing. Of course this would happen to him, of course his soulmate’s sentence would be flirting with someone else in front of thousands of people, even if it is a joke. And it’s the same problem as months back — how the _hell_ is he supposed to tell Daniel?

He does the only thing he can think of, and types _!uptime_ into the chat. Nightbot responds with _1 hour 57 minutes. _He then pulls out his phone, pushes up his sleeve, and snaps a picture of his arm. He makes a note on his phone, types in the time on the stream that Nightbot gave him, and attaches the picture.

“People are saying Kevin’s here,” he hears Daniel say on the stream, and his eyes widen. “Hey, Kevin!”

Oh shit. Oh fuck. Oh God.

“Hey, what’s up, dude?” Will chimes in, and Kevin just about throws his phone across the room. The last thing he needs right now is Wilbur Soot trying to be friendly with him.

He hesitates for a moment before typing, _sounds like you two are having fun_ into the chat.

Daniel reads his message, then they both crack up. “Yeah, we are,” Will says, cackling. “You could join too, make it a threesome!”

“Oh no!” Daniel cries before dissolving into a fit of giggles.

_I think I’m good_, he types into chat, then rips out his earbuds and slams his phone down on the desk.

He leans back in his chair, throwing an arm over his eyes. It’s stupid, but he feels so frustrated and helpless; he’s so close yet so far. He could text Daniel right now, attach the picture and say nothing else and wait for the reaction, but that would be intentionally cruel and he can’t bring himself to harm Daniel. He has to wait for the stream to be over, at least.

But he can’t sit through any more of this, literally physically can’t — even the quiet sound of Dan and Will bantering that spills from his earbuds is making him feel ill. He locks his phone, resolving to text Daniel later, when he’s sure the stream is long over.

He puts on some music for the background instead, and turns back to the paperwork. This has to get done, even if all he wants to do now is nap for a thousand years.

Once he’s finished, he stumbles to his room and collapses on his bed. It’s a little late for a nap — he should probably be having dinner about now — but he’s so emotionally drained that he falls asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.

* * *

Kevin wakes up to a pitch-black room and an overwhelming sense of disorientation. He rubs his eyes for a few moments, then realizes with a flash of dread that he still hasn’t texted Daniel. He grabs his phone from his bedside table in a panic, squinting at the sudden light to check the time.

12:04 AM.

“…fuck,” he says quietly, into the silent blackness of his room.

He opens up his notes app and goes to the note he made earlier. The picture of his arm, that stupid sentence, seems to be mocking him. There’s no date on the picture, nothing to signify when it was taken.

He goes to Daniel’s contact next, biting his lip. He could still send it, of course. Daniel would probably believe him. Probably.

To be honest, it does sound like something he would do as a joke. Taking a stupid sentence and turning it into a soulmate quote. Maybe in another universe, if his soulmate was anyone else, he’d photoshop this picture and send it to Daniel as a joke. And if there’s anything worse than finding his soulmate and not being able to tell him, it’s telling him and Daniel thinking it’s just a big joke.

If anything’s a joke, it’s him as a person.

He sits there for a while, staring blankly at the screen, until finally, fingers shaking, he starts to type.

_hey, you still awake?_

Then he throws his phone to the side and gets out of bed. He’s dreading Daniel’s response, and he’s starving anyway, so he might as well get some food before checking for a reply.

* * *

**Me:** hey, you still awake? (12:08 AM)

**Main Rival **😤🤪**:** Sorry I didn’t answer last night, lol. What’s up? (9:57 AM)

**Me:** it’s fine (10:06 AM)

**Me:** you wanna stream together again sometime soon? (10:06 AM)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> someone in RT's chat during today's stream: hey do you read fanfiction?  
RT: no. moving swiftly on,  
me: ...thank god.....
> 
> also, is anyone else's ao3 inbox just completely broken? new comments on my stuff just aren't showing up in my inbox when I log in and idk if this is a me problem or a site-wide issue.


	4. that was satisfying to watch / i had too much!

It’s been months since he and Kevin streamed together, so Daniel’s excited for this. Their fake beef has kept them from collabing over the past few months, and Daniel’s missed their easy joking, their natural chemistry. Not that he’d admit it to Kevin, especially after what happened at Insomnia.

After the Revenge incident all those weeks ago, he’s been admittedly unable to stop thinking about who his soulmate might be. Kevin’s a likely suspect, and honestly, he’s hoping that Kevin’s the one. He's funny, handsome, and kind, but most of all he _gets_ Daniel. Not just as a fellow content creator or an Irish guy, but on a deeper level. Ever since they became friends, there's always been a kind of unspoken connection between them; they think they same, they talk the same. _Great minds think alike_, Kevin will often say, and Daniel likes to follow it up with, _but fools rarely differ_. Fools or geniuses, though, they would make a great match.

It just bothers the hell out of Daniel that, even though he heard his sentence, he can’t be sure who his soulmate is. It’s infuriating that the person was right there in that bar, and his drunken ass just went home to sleep. If he was braver, he might have accosted every person who sang Revenge in that bar and asked to see their forearm, but he thinks that could be classified as sexual harassment, so he’s glad he didn’t. In the end, the only option was the one he chose, but he still dwells on it, as if he could do anything else at the time.

Today, his sentence is pretty normal: _that was satisfying to watch_. It’s useless to guess its context; it could be referring to anything from slime ASMR to a football game, so he tries to put it out of his mind for the day. Streaming with another person is usually good for that, so he texts Kevin at the decided-upon time right on the dot.

**Me:** You ready to stream? (2:45 PM)

**Evil Clone **🤠**:** hell yeah (2:46 PM)

**Me:** I’m calling you now (2:46 PM)

**Evil Clone **🤠**:** alright (2:46 PM)

Daniel calls him on Discord, and soon enough his friend’s cheery voice is coming through his headphones. “Hey dude, how’s it going?”

“Pretty good, and yourself?” Daniel asks, setting up the game for them.

“Can’t complain,” Kevin replies. “What’ve you got in mind for us to play today?”

“Portal 2,” Daniel says, sending him the link to join on Discord.

“Oh, nice! I love this game,” Kevin says, then his username pops up on Daniel’s screen a moment later.

“You got in okay?” Daniel asks.

“Yep, easy peasy.”

“Alright.” Daniel adjusts his own audio, then Kevin’s, and then the game’s. He spends a few more minutes setting up, then starts the stream. “Okay, I think we’re good,” he says.

“Awesome. I’m going to open up your chat, too.”

“Cool.” He watches as people start to join the chat, spamming already. “Hey, how’s it going, folks! Everyone’s making their way in already. Can you hear me and Kevin okay?”

“Hello,” Kevin says.

“He’s lurking in the background,” Daniel says, and they both chuckle. “Hi dad,” Daniel reads from chat. “That could refer to either of us.”

“Yeah, which one are they talking to?” Kevin laughs.

“Is that my child or yours?” Daniel jokes.

“Let’s hope it’s yours, because I ate my last one.”

“Oh no,” Daniel laughs, continuing to read from chat. “You’re both our dads, someone says. Okay, that works.”

Kevin coughs. “We gonna get going, then?”

“We’ll just give folks a minute or two to hop in before we get going,” Daniel tells him.

“Right.”

They chat for a couple minutes, then get going on the game. “We’re playing Portal 2, we’re playing the co-op mode,” Daniel informs the stream, “we’re gonna solve some puzzles.”

“Attempt to solve them.”

“Attempt to, yeah,” Daniel laughs. “The key word is try.”

Despite their pessimism, Daniel finds they make a good team. Sure, Kevin can be a little shit and steal the ball from him, or when he can’t do that, steal Daniel’s head, but he’s also amazing at taking direction. They find themselves flying through the puzzles, only bantering and joking in between chapters. The only thing seeming to hinder them is their internet connection — sometimes Kevin’s audio will cut out or become muffled, and Kevin, in turn, asks Daniel to repeat himself often enough that he knows it must be happening on Kevin’s end as well. Other than that, though, the stream goes smoothly.

“We’re sailing through these,” Daniel comments, as he and Kevin enter a new area. They look around, scanning the puzzle. It looks like they’ll have to progress downward, making and deleting a series of light bridges.

“I-” Kevin says, but the rest of his sentence is cut off.

“Can we shoot through this?” Daniel wonders, then shoots through a light bridge. “Ah, we can.”

“Okay,” says Kevin. “I was wondering for a second there.”

“Wait, wait, you wanna see something scary?” Daniel grins, then shoots a new light bridge, deleting the one he and Kevin are standing on. They fall to the new light bridge below.

“Oh, Jesus Christ lad, me heart,” Kevin says, over-exaggerated.

“Okay, we need to stand close together here,” Daniel says, preparing to do the same thing.

“Okay.”

He shoots a new bridge again, and they fall below once again.

“Me now? Do I get to do something?” Kevin asks hopefully, running back and forth on the light bridge.

“Yeah, uh, put the red one there,” Daniel tells him. He glances at the spot, and realizes it’s too high up. “Can we reach that?”

“No,” Kevin laughs. He starts to say something else, but Daniel interrupts as an idea occurs to him.

“Okay, I’ve got an idea to save us, but we need to really time our jumps, kay? I need to slowly raise this portal.”

“What was that?” Kevin asks, coming to stand beside him.

“I said we need to slowly raise the portal.”

“Right, yes.”

“We need to time this.”

“I’m scared,” Kevin whines, then switches back to his normal voice. “Wait, hold on, hold on, there’s a timer.” An orange diamond shape flashes up on Daniel’s screen, with a countdown from three in the middle of it. It counts down, and the two of them jump. Daniel shoots while they’re in the air, and they land again.

“I made it lower. Damn it, we’re further away from our goal.”

Kevin laughs hard. Daniel giggles too — it _is_ kind of funny.

“Okay, set our timer again,” he says, and Kevin does. It counts down, they jump, and Daniel shoots.

“That did it!” Kevin cries, running to the other wall.

“Now put the red one there!” He does, and they run through. “Oh, we saved it. That was close.” They both giggle.

They spend the next minute trying to reconfigure all their portals — they’ve gotten their wires crossed in the confusion. Once they do, they head through another of Kevin’s portals to progress.

They’re now standing on a slightly slanted light bridge far above the ground, and Daniel looks about, trying to see what they’re supposed to do.

“Wait, can we make this?” Daniel asks, peering down over the side of the light bridge. Below them is a few platforms.

“Uh, there’s a place to get momentum down there,” says Kevin.

“Oh God, okay wait, this is supposed to be a momentum jump.”

There’s a pause.

“-doesn’t seem right at all,” Kevin says, the first part of his sentence muffled. Daniel can hear the frown in his voice.

Daniel shoots the portal. “Okay, Kevin, I’m gonna need you to jump with me, like…” he trails off, looking at the drop. “It’s gonna be real risky, ‘cause I have to break your portal for this to work.”

“Oh, I see,” says Kevin.

“You jump first, okay?” Daniel instructs. “Countdown, you jump. I’ll establish the link, and then I’ll go after you.”

“Okay, I’m going,” he says, then starts the timer. Once it reaches zero, he jumps, and Daniel disconnects Kevin’s portal, then jumps too.

“Everything is fine!” Kevin says as he falls. Daniel falls through the portal and sees Kevin land neatly on the platform.

“Ohhh,” Daniel sighs in relief as he too approaches the platform — except his robot hits the wall and falls to a platform below. “_No_!” He yells. “I went too- I had too much momentum!” Kevin bursts out laughing. “Aw, come on!” Daniel laughs with him, though mostly out of frustration.

“That was-” Kevin’s voice cuts out abruptly,“-ing to watch!”

“I had too much!” Daniel cries, still devastated over his bad luck.

“Hold on,” Kevin says, then a portal appears beside Daniel. “The day is saved, come on up.”

“Ah, thank God,” Daniel laughs, then goes through the portal and joins Kevin at the end of the level. “I can’t believe that.”

Kevin laughs again. Shaking his head, Daniel reaches for his water bottle to take a sip, then blinks in surprise as the words on his arm come into view. _That was satisfying to watch_. Kevin’sconnection cut out, but it sounded like he said that a moment ago.

“I-” Kevin starts to say, but Daniel cuts him off hurriedly.

“Wait, Kevin, what’d you say after I fell?”

“Oh, I just said, like, it was very satisfying to watch, you smacking your head like that,” Kevin chuckles. Daniel chuckles too, even as disappointment fills him.

They make their way into their respective pods and listen to GLaDOS’ monotonous voice. The loading screen fades up, and Daniel unscrews the lid on his water bottle and takes a sip. The sentence was so close — if only the word _very_ was written on his arm.

* * *

An hour later, it’s time to wrap up the stream. He mutes Kevin on Discord to say goodbye to chat, then unmutes him once he’s safely passed off his viewers to another streamer.

“That was a good session,” Kevin comments. “We worked together better than I thought.”

“It went better than Don’t Starve Together,” Daniel says. “Maybe because there was no opportunity for you to set stuff on fire.”

They share a laugh. “No for real, it was great doing this today,” Kevin insists. “I don’t really work with others that often, so it’s nice.”

“Yeah, it was,” Daniel smiles.

“Gets kinda lonely, just making videos by yourself all day, y’know?” Kevin says softly.

“I get that.” Daniel knows what it feels like to be tied to his desk, his screen, how isolated he feels when the only time he leaves his room in a day is to eat.

Kevin coughs, then changes the subject. “So, you going to Twitch con, then?”

“I am, actually,” Daniel replies, surprised. He hasn’t been announced as a guest yet, so technically he’s not allowed to tell anyone, but he knows Kevin won’t let the secret out.

“Awesome, me too! We should get together, then.”

“Oh, for sure,” Daniel agrees. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen you in person.”

"That’s exactly why we should hang out!” Kevin says, excited.

Daniel laughs. “Definitely.” He glances at his watch, then realizes he has to a call a sponsor pretty soon, and starts to say goodbye to Kevin. “Well, I-”

“D’you know what you’re doing at Twitch con yet?” Kevin interrupts him hurriedly. “Like, do you have a booth or anything?”

“No, I don’t know,” Daniel tells him. “Listen, Kev-”

“‘Cause they told me I’d have a meet and greet line, so I was thinking we could set one up together.”

“Sounds great,” Daniel says loudly, “but I gotta go, Kevin. I have to call a sponsor in, like, ten minutes.”

“Oh. Right.” Kevin sounds a little disappointed.

“Talk to you later, then,” says Daniel.

“Sure,” Kevin says. “Thanks again for having me.”

“Yeah, of course. All the best.”

“You too.”

“Bye now.”

“Bye.”


	5. guys c’mon, it’s not that funny / dan!

Kevin is straight up _not_ having a good time right now. Past Kevin really screwed him over with suggesting a joint meet and greet line with Daniel, because his poor heart almost can’t handle being around him at this point. Every smile, every joke, even the brush of his hand on Kevin’s lower back when he has his arm around him for a photo nearly gives Kevin a heart attack. He has to at least try to be professional and focus on the fans, but he’s sure his preoccupation with Daniel is obvious to all who come through his line. At one point a fan even calls him out on it, and he chokes on air and blushes furiously. He really needs to get his shit together.

“What’d they say to you?” Daniel asks, noticing Kevin’s redness as the fan walks off with their signed Jim Pickens poster. “You look like a lobster.”

“Shut up,” Kevin laughs awkwardly. “It was just a really stupid joke.”

“Oh?” Daniel leans in.

Kevin waves him off as a couple fans approach them. “I’ll tell you later,” he says, hoping Daniel will forget. He tries to forget it himself, focusing on greeting the fans.

It’s not helping his distracted state of mind that today’s sentence is dangerously simple: _guys c’mon, it’s not that funny._ He knows Daniel exceedingly well, knows what’ll set him off — knows that, with enough bad jokes, he could probably get Daniel to say the sentence without too much effort.

The question is, of course, whether he _should_. It would definitely solve his problem of the moment not being right. Sure, it’d be a little more public than he’d like, but anything is better than announcing it live on stream to thousands of viewers, and besides, people find their soulmates in public all the time. But what if Daniel found out what Kevin was trying to do? He’d probably never believe Kevin if he said that they were organically soulmates, and then Kevin would just have to die alone.

Still, he argues with himself all throughout the day, going through the motions of meeting fans and taking pictures. There’s an official Twitch con kick-off party going on tonight (with free booze!), and he and Daniel are planning to attend, along with a few of their other streamer friends, so he thinks that would be the ideal location to put his plan into motion. Should he choose to, that is.

Even if he does pull it off, and Daniel never suspects a thing, manipulating Daniel into saying his sentence is definitely seedy and wrong, and almost cruel in a way. If he did, he’d be robbing Daniel of the magic of happenstance, his right to a moment of pure chance. He inherited this moment when Kevin learned to speak, when his first words appeared on Daniel’s arm as a toddler. Kevin doesn’t have the right to take that away from him, deceive him like that, and he knows if he was in Daniel’s place, he would be incredibly angry if he found out his soulmate did that.

He doesn’t really have a choice, of course. It’s not like he ever did.

The meet and greet seems to drag on, but finally, the line dwindles down, and they’re done for the day. Kevin’s wrist hurts from signing stuff and his face hurts from smiling for pictures, but he glances at Daniel, who’s all soft eyes and frowning mouth, concentrating on helping clean up, and he knows it’s worth it.

“Hey,” he says, leaning beside Daniel on the merch table. Daniel glances up from sorting through some piles of posters. “When and where did you wanna meet up for the party tonight?”

Daniel straightens one of the piles. “In the hotel lobby at nine?”

“Sure,” Kevin replies. He glances down at Daniel’s sorting. “Need some help with that?”

“Nah, it’s fine,” Daniel says, shrugging. He gives him a small smile. “You don’t have to stick around, if you don’t want to. Or if you have somewhere else to be.”

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” Kevin says without thinking, then feels heat spring to his cheeks.

Daniel laughs. “Okay, you big flirt, then help me with these posters.”

Kevin gives him a cheeky grin, trying to hide his slip-up behind the kind of jokey flirting that he does with almost everyone. “I’d be absolutely honoured to.”

Daniel rolls his eyes, but the look he gives Kevin is nothing short of affectionate, so Kevin counts it as a win.

* * *

Kevin’s waiting in the lobby of the hotel by 8:55 that evening, checking his watch nervously every ten seconds. Over the course of the day anxiety about this party built up in his stomach, as nausea-inducing as some of his worst stomachaches, but he’s adamantly ignoring it. The rational part of his brain knows everything will turn out okay, but the other part, the much more powerful part, keeps asking over and over, _what if it doesn’t though?_

Luckily for his anxiety, he doesn’t have to wait long. Daniel shows up in the lobby at 8:57, looking handsome in a fresh change of clothes. He bumps Kevin’s shoulder as he walks up to him, causing Kevin to startle and look up from his phone.

“Ready to go?” He asks, bouncing on the balls of his feet in a way Kevin finds particularly endearing.

“More than,” Kevin says.

They head to the venue, which is only a few blocks from their hotel, chatting about nothing and everything. Once they arrive and hang up their coats, they see a lot of people are there already, including some people they know. They wander towards their friends, grabbing a drink on the way.

A few drinks in Kevin’s lost Daniel, and even as disappointment fills him at that realization, he's also relieved in a weird way. At least if they don’t hang out, he doesn’t have to worry about his feelings running rampant, or, against his better judgement, trying to drunkenly explainto Daniel the whole mess he got himself into during the Don’t Starve stream. That sounds exactly like something Drunk Kevin would do.

He grabs another drink as he weaves his way through the crowds of people. Music is blasting, but he can still catch snippets of conversation. He idly wonders who everyone’s soulmates are; who’s spending their night alone and staring at their sentence sadly, not realizing their life partner is saying it with a smile on their face.

Kevin ends up chatting with some guys whose streams he’s watched on a handful of occasions. It turns out they’re pretty cool people, and to his surprise, also enjoy his content. If anything, he can at least say he came out of this con with a few new connections.

He’s just laughing at a joke one of them cracked when there’s a lull in the music. He hears a burst of loud laughter from across the room, followed by Daniel’s voice. He doesn’t catch the exact words, but his tone is defensive, almost hurt. Kevin glances around, suddenly not caring if he seems rude to his new friends, searching for Daniel’s face.

He finally catches a glimpse of Daniel, almost hidden behind a group of people. Kevin doesn’t recognize any one of them, but they’re laughing with Daniel as if they’re familiar with him. Daniel doesn’t look so amused, though.

“Guys c’mon, it’s not that funny,” Daniel says, nearly shouting. Noise rushes into Kevin’s ears, swallowing up the group’s response to Daniel and anything his new friends are trying to say to him.

“Sorry, I gotta go,” he murmurs to the guys in a daze, then starts to push his way through the crowd to get to Daniel.

He doesn’t allow himself to overthink it — that’s never helped him, anyway — and just goes, muttering apologies to anyone he shoves or bumps into on the way. It’s not the best moment, but it’ll do. And maybe the best moment would never come anyway, and he’d be doomed to hear his sentences over and over, forever putting it off because of some internalized fear he has yet to name. He doesn’t want to feel so alone anymore, in the middle of a crowd or in the eye of a storm, so he bursts into a run, not caring who sees him or what kind of a moment it is, only caring that he gets to Daniel, Daniel, _Daniel-_

“Dan!” He calls, gasping for breath, finally coming to a stop beside his friend. He lays a hand on Daniel’s shoulder and he whips around faster than Kevin expected, throwing his hand off his shoulder. Kevin notes in surprise that his eyes are bright with tears.

“Not now, Kev, _Jesus fucking Christ!_” Daniel snaps, and Kevin takes a step back. Daniel’s cheeks are flushed, and his drunken brain can’t help but register how beautiful he looks in the dim lights, even yelling at him.

“Sorry,” Kevin breathes, cowed. “I just-”

“Save it,” Daniel interrupts, then stomps off. Kevin watches in shocked disbelief as he disappears into the crowd of people, then turns back to the group Daniel was talking to.

“What was _that_ about?” one of them has the nerve to ask him.

He glares. “I should be asking you that! I’ve never seen him so mad.”

The woman shrugs. “He was overreacting. We were just joking around about our soulmate sentences.”

Kevin’s stomach roils, and he wishes he could just die on the spot. Dramatic irony seems to be following him everywhere these days. “What about exactly?” he presses.

“He didn’t want to share his, and we were just shooting the shit about what it might be,” says someone else. “And then he finally told us, and it was pretty funny.”

Kevin’s still short of breath from his run, but he thinks even if he wasn’t, he’d have no breath after hearing that explanation. “What the shit?” He says. “That’s not okay, fuck you guys.”

“C’mon dude, chill out. It’s just jokes,” says the first woman. “You wanna know what it is?” She raises her eyebrows at him.

Kevin’s tempted for a moment. He could find out Daniel’s sentence, go talk to him, and make sure to say the sentence. Problem solved. But when he opens his mouth to respond, the air won’t come. The word _yes_ is stuck in his throat, and he knows he can’t cough it up, because even now, broken and raw and so desperate, he doesn’t want to betray Daniel like that. He squeezes his eyes shut. Daniel’s angry face swims behind his eyelids, and a wave of nausea washes over him, so strong he nearly topples over.

Kevin opens his eyes. Her face, its expression part expectant and part amused, shifts in and out of focus. “No,” he tells her, even as his voice shakes. “If he didn’t wanna share, it was probably for a good reason.” Then he turns and runs again, his heart jumping into his throat, trying to claw its way out of his body. He gets his coat from the coat check and stumbles through the front doors, barely upright.

He bursts from the venue into the cold night air and just tries to breathe, in and out, in and out, his vision blurring, distorting the image of his breath smoking out and dissipating in front of him. It’s all too much. The world is closing in on him, gripping like a vice and squeezing the air from his lungs. Tears roll down his cheeks, and he starts to cry silently, his body racked with shudders as he releases all the stress he’s been holding in.

He doesn’t know how long he spends outside, sobbing and coughing wetly. But he does know that when he finally sniffles to a stop, his ears and nose are frozen, and he desperately needs a good night’s sleep.

Kevin wipes his eyes. He then raises his forearm into view, pushes up his sleeve, and glares at the sentence. He tightens his jaw. In that moment, he hates the sentence and everything it stands for. “Fuck soulmates,” he mutters bitterly, then begins the walk back to his hotel.

* * *

**Main Rival **😤🤪**: **I’m so sorry about last night, Kevin. I was really hammered, I didn’t mean anything I might have said (11:28 AM)

**Me:** don’t worry about it, you said nothing bad. i forgive you, haha (11:32 AM)


	6. wooden boards, one, you, zero / kevin.

Daniel spends the second day of Twitch con in bed with a wicked hangover. He’s supposed to meet up with Akia today, but now that he’s feeling like shit both mentally and physically, he has to cancel. She says not to worry about it, but he still feels bad about letting her down, and it’s just the cherry on top of the garbage sundae that is his mood right now.

He wakes up at around eleven, somewhat surprised he managed to make it back to his hotel last night. In the state he was in, he wouldn’t be surprised if he accidentally took a cab to a different hotel on the other side of the city.

Thinking about how he got back to his hotel dredges up unwanted memories from the party, and Daniel groans, rolling over and burying his face in the pillows. He wishes he had the luxury of forgetting everything that happened last night, but the universe isn’t that kind to him. The good parts are blurry, but he remembers the bad parts — feeling embarrassed of his sentence, getting made fun of because of it, and then yelling at Kevin. He doesn’t remember exactly what he said, but he remembers Kevin’s face: shocked, then immediately hurt. Guilt washes over him as he thinks about it.

Daniel sends a couple apology texts that morning, one to Kevin and one to Akia. It makes him feel even worse, reading his lame excuses and their gracious replies. He doesn’t deserve his friends.

Daniel doesn’t once push up his sleeve to check his sentence that day, either. He’s not planning on leaving the room, and unless his soulmate is the goddamn UberEats guy, then there’s no point in reading it today.

It makes his stomach churn whenever he thinks about it, and he thinks about it often, in between binging YouTube videos and scrolling through Twitter. He thinks about snatching his arm away, changing the subject, going to get another drink, anything he could have done differently last night. How stupidly easy it seems now, with his headache pounding on the inside of his skull, as if trying to hammer through his mind how much he fucked up last night.

He didn’t have to show them. He tried not to, said no in as many different ways he could think of, but when their teasing finally got under his skin, he said _fine, you assholes_, and relented. Somewhere in the back of his mind he hoped for a little sympathy, thought that maybe the fact that his sentence was literally _fuck soulmates_ would get them to shut up and apologize. Too optimistic.

The rational part of Daniel’s mind knows it’s not his fault, that they would have kept on pushing even if he didn’t give in, but he still feels sick and ashamed when the image of rolling up his sleeve for them pops, unbidden, into his mind. 

* * *

Daniel spends the next little while trying to focus on himself. While he loves streaming and his career, he’s realized he needs to take a step back to take care of himself. His viewers are all very understanding, and once again he counts himself lucky that he has such a supportive community.

He spends time with his friends, he travels, he works on his book, he sets up a recording studio for his new podcast, he commissions a new emote and some new merch designs. It helps, broadening his horizons and not just streaming and editing for hours on end.

He slowly slips back into his routine of checking his sentence every day, but he tries not to worry about finding his soulmate so much. These close calls lately have been messing with his head, making him think he’s missing his chance at love forever. He tries to tell himself that it’ll happen when it’s meant to happen. And in the meantime, he can be happy without a soulmate.

* * *

It’s a couple months until he sees Kevin again. They haven’t hung out in person since Twitch con, but there’s no hard feelings between them, thank God. Kevin invites him down to Cork for a day, just to hang out, and Daniel accepts eagerly.

Today’s sentence is a little odd — _wooden boards, one, you, zero_ — but true to his resolution, Daniel tries to put it out of his head. It’s unlikely he’ll hear it today anyway, seeing as he and Kevin will most likely be playing games.

He tries not to think about the fact that his soulmate _could_ be Kevin, tries not to remember his friend’s flushed face as they sang along to Revenge all those months ago. And succeeds, for the most part. He’s been getting better at ignoring things he wants to think about.

As Daniel suspected, he and Kevin spend most of the day inside playing video games. When afternoon approaches, Daniel suggests getting out of the house for some fresh air. Something sparks in Kevin’s eyes, and he jumps up from the couch with a grin and a, “I know just the thing.”

A short drive later, they pull up in front of a public park. Beyond some shrubbery, Daniel can see people gliding around on a large frozen body of water.

“Ice skating?” he asks Kevin, amused.

“Yeah!” Kevin responds enthusiastically, unbuckling his seatbelt. “I haven’t been yet this year, and this rink is always good.”

“We don’t have skates,” Daniel points out.

“We can rent some,” Kevin says, hopping out of the car. “Are you coming or not?”

“Of course I am,” Daniel tells him, then gets out of the car as well.

They each rent a pair of skates from the small booth at the side of the rink, then sit on a wooden bench to lace them up. Soon enough they’re gliding slowly on the ice, not yet confident enough to go fast or do anything fancy.

“I haven’t skated in years,” Daniel confesses, taking a few shaky steps. “So be warned, I might fall on you.”

Kevin skates by, doing a twirl then starting to skate backwards. “It’ll come back to you. Like riding a bike!”

They do a lap of the rink, and by the time they get all the way around again they’re comfortable on the ice. Glancing around, Daniel realizes that most of the other people on the rink are couples, skating around leisurely and holding hands, and he sighs. He wonders if any of these couples think he and Kevin are together. He glances up at Kevin, a few paces ahead of him, and knows he wouldn’t mind that. He wouldn’t mind that at all.

“Hey, Dan!” Kevin calls, turning suddenly. Thank God for the cold; he can always blame his flushed cheeks on the chilly wind nipping at his skin. “Wanna race?” He grins, raising his eyebrows challengingly.

Daniel grins back. “You’re on.”

Kevin beckons to him, and he skates forward so that they’re the same distance from the opposite side of the rink. “To the other end, and back?”

“Sure. Three, two, one, go!”

They take off across the ice, each pumping their skates as fast as they can to ensure a victory. Kevin gets an early lead, but Daniel is determined to win this and lord it over Kevin for the rest of the day, so he pushes himself, and eventually pulls ahead. He looks down at his skates, pounding rhythmically on the ice and carrying him closer and closer to victory, and feels elation fill him. He laughs almost maniacally, the wind whipping through his hair, and throws a glance back at Kevin.

“Catch me if you can!” He teases.

Kevin’s smiling too, but it falls from his face sharply. “Dan, watch out!”

Daniel looks ahead just in time to see the wall that separates the rink from the adjacent café, then slams right into it.

Pain. Mostly in his shoulders and then his tailbone when he falls on his butt, the ice cold and wet and soaking through his pants. “Fuck,” he groans, looking down at his palms — they’re all scraped up from putting his hands out at the last second to try and catch himself.

Kevin skates up beside him, stopping with a small spray of snow. “Holy shit, Dan, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just a little bruised up.” Daniel looks up at him, trying to smile reassuringly. Kevin’s worried expression softens into a fond one.

Kevin holds out a hand to help him up. “Jesus Christ, that was funny, though,” he says, chuckling. Daniel chuckles too, then grabs his hand and hauls himself to his feet. He releases Kevin’s hand somewhat reluctantly, then starts to brush snow off himself. “You just slammed right into the wall. Wooden boards one, you, zero.”

Daniel’s so busy making sure it doesn’t look like he’s pissed himself with all that melted snow on his pants, that he almost misses it.

_Wooden boards one, you, zero._

So it is Kevin.

And something just melts from his shoulders, something inside him slots and clicks into place. He’s found his soulmate — he’s come home.

“Kevin.”

He’s unable to stop the silly grin spreading over his face, laughing at Kevin’s sudden confusion.

“You okay, Dan? Not concussed, or anything?” Kevin asks, suddenly concerned.

Daniel shakes his head. “No, Kevin, look.” He throws off his coat and tosses it on the ice, then pushes up his sleeve to show Kevin the sentence. _Wooden boards, one, you, zero._ “We’re soulmates.”

Kevin doesn’t even glance down at Daniel’s arm, just smiles at him like the sun coming out on a cloudy day. “I know.”

“What do you mean, you know?” Daniel asks, dropping his arm. For a moment, he’s terrified Kevin will reject him, tell him he doesn’t want a partner, or isn’t ready for this, or something like that.

“I heard you say my sentence one day, but it wasn’t a good time to let you know,” Kevin explains softly, skating closer to him. “It would have made things awkward. Trust me.”

Daniel laughs, giddy relief flooding into him. “Only you would keep quiet on the most important news of your life just because it might be awkward.”

Kevin laughs too, wrapping his hands around Daniel’s waist and pulling him closer. “Shut up and kiss me already.”

So Daniel does. He kisses him with everything he has, all the love in his heart. It’s all Kevin’s now, and really, it’s always been. He just wasn’t ready to give it yet.

They pull away, and by God, Daniel knows he’s ready to give Kevin all his love. So goddamn ready.

* * *

Later, when they’re sitting in the adjacent café with chilly fingers wrapped around mugs of hot chocolate, Daniel will ask, “so, how long have you known?”

Kevin will just chuckle, staring into the depths of his mug. “You’re gonna kill me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chap is incredibly corny, but at least she's done!!! this whole fic developed from one (1) piece of dialogue from their first Don't Starve stream and me falling on my ass going skating a couple weeks ago, and it's kinda surreal to see how much this spiralled out of control. thanks everyone for ur lovely comments, it fills me with so much joy to see people enjoying my works and really motivates me to keep going. <3 I appreciate every one of y'all!
> 
> quick poll for you to answer in the comments! which draft of mine would you rather see posted first?
> 
> A) a short, fluffy vignette about Daniel wearing Kevin's clothes  
B) a short, angsty, genderbent fic with some mild sexual content  
C) a long, more plot-focused, angst-with-a-happy-ending Kevin/RT/Anna assassins AU
> 
> all of these will get posted eventually, but I just thought it'd be interesting to ask which y'all would like first. :)


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